Field Report: Year One.

September 2015: I turn 40. Wife throws me a big party. Tons of family and friends filling my house, yard and driveway. My parents come and my dad grills fifteen pounds of flank-steak for tacos. Kids everywhere, margaritas, bonfire. People tell funny stories about me into the night. I love my friends, my three sons, my life, except…

October: Except my wife won’t have sex with me. I can’t sleep. Spend hours in the night negotiating, pleading, crying on the edge of the bed. Escape the pain with alcohol, weed, porn. Google tells me “low sex marriage” is extremely common, and a leading cause of divorce. I find Ironwood’s blog which leads me to MRP. Eureka! Finally, some people with answers and an action plan. Except, wait, it’s MY fault? And I have to do WHAT? Ok, fine. I read MMSLP and the Book of Pook. I take a good look in the mirror and now I can see the dad-bod, the beer gut. I wouldn’t fuck me either.

November: Fuck. My dad goes in for bypass surgery on November 17th. Complications ensue in Intensive Care, and he’s gone. The mid-life crisis I avoided on my birthday comes crashing in. I plan the funeral, write the obit, re-evaluate my life. I am now the oldest man in my family. I have to stop being the Prince (and the frog) and start being the King. Suddenly I can see how the sex is not the issue, but a symptom. Choking. Down. The. Pill. My dad was the Man. Now he’s dead. I must become the Man. At least I have a MAP, I read the Mindful Attraction Plan, but I am mad.

December: Anger. I walk into the gym for the first time. Listening to Professor’s podcasts, Art of Manliness, Order of Man. I had been TRI (athaloning) ing for years but lifting heavy weight is different. Read NMMNG and skimmed WISNIFG, that sucker is long. I Learn enough to stop DEERing, start to STFU and begin to establish something called “Frame.” I start noticing the principles in daily life and popular media. Still fat, sad, and angry. Recognizing shit tests, still failing.

January 2016: Start passing shit tests. My wife senses something is different, chalks it up to grief. Shit tests increase, so do feelz. Sex goes from once a month to once a week. I experiment with OI, which is new to me. I still appear butthurt, can’t STFU, and am not even close to a DNGAF attitude. Still a huge amount of my self-worth wrapped into my marriage. Read The Rational Male 1 & 2, also Fight Club. Starting to control the anger, replacing it with sore muscles. Starting to enjoy the journey and the pain, but still digesting. Nothing internalized.

February: Start improving diet and wardrobe. At least paying attention to them by controlling portions and ironing clothes. Realize I have been self-medicating with porn, so I give that up easy. Feel the hunger, how it energizes. My wife starts working out more, shit tests intensify, but she’s starting to be less harpy and more sweet. She is still pretty hot, hard to keep up. We have sex twice in one weekend. But I’m still a bitch and I take it as validation. There is still a part of me that is doing this for the wrong reason: her. Visiting my mom more often, a few hours drive. I realize her happiness is not my responsibility either, but she needs help so I help. Take advantage of those weekends to lift, journal, read, and start approaching women. Begin reading Way of the Superior Man. Holy fuck. Mindset changing.

March: Mindset changing. I have a huge realization that my anger has all come from fear -- the fear that I am not in control. I realize I can take control if I take responsibility -- If I decide to be the Captain. For me, this is the beginning of understanding Frame. That if I can start acting, I can stop reacting. I am the Captain, the spirit of the family begins with me. If I want something to turn out a certain way, if I want a vibe of respect and joy, I must embody that. I make friends with the anger. I read Meditations, slowly, and consider the power of stoicism. I realize the Rage has always been there, and always will be. But I can channel it into heavy weights and the pedals of my bike -- not my kids, my wife. Springtime.

April: Spring forward. I begin my first cut. Low carb, low calorie. Lots of water. I cut back on masturbation, stop chugging beer and start sipping whiskey. I am enjoying the hunger, it energizes. I am enjoying the feeling of exercising my body and my will. I feel in control. People are starting to notice me, and I notice them. I had not allowed myself to really feel attracted to women in years, but now I am getting hugs and giving them back. I have now lost 25 pounds of fat and probably gained 10 pounds of muscle. 6’1, 190lbs. My pants are too big, my belts are too big. My wife is MUCH calmer and more receptive to my advances. I am still getting hard No’s on a regular basis, but also a lot more openings. Now, I have a new struggle: ED. What? I realize I am still WAY too focused on sex (it’s now ME who can’t relax). I have a long way to go. I read Models and Billie Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

May: The test. On a warm Friday night I stay home till my family is in bed. Restless, I head back into town. Great band at a local bar, tons of people, great energy. I have always been a good dancer, so I’m having fun. It’s weird going in to a party scene with all this new knowledge of game, SMV and Laws of Attraction. Dancing with lots of cuties, lock into one in particular. Young, blonde, HB7. She invites me home for a backyard fire with some friends. I help make the fire. We sing songs, she cuddles up to me. It’s late and we are pretty drunk. She says she is tired and invites me in. I walk her inside and she is on me. There in the doorway, she kisses me like I haven’t been kissed in a long, long time. Whoa. What just happened? I tell her I should put out the fire and goodnight. Another kiss. Next day I text her that I’m leaving town with my wife and kids. Wife and kids? I don’t remember what I read in May.

June: Man-cation. Once a year my boys from back in the day pick a random city to meet up in. We have a fantasy football league and spend the year conspiring about where to go and what to do. It’s great. I recommend mancation to any MRP guy trying to re-boot. It’s so fun to just totally screw around and remember my roots. I can’t bullshit these guys. One friend asks me what’s up and I explain some of the journey, and about kissing the girl in May. He confesses that his wife caught him with an escort last month and they are on the brink of divorce. We are not alone, guys. Some of my friends want to see strippers but I convince them it’s more fun to go to clubs and talk to real girls. We have a great time getting shit-tested by some babes at a pool hall. One can’t stop feeling my shoulders and arms. I have a great run at pool winning like 8 games in a row before losing the table and my boys drag me out of there. When i get home my wife, surprisingly, missed me “a ton.” She lets me know with her actions as well as her words. I read One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest -- MRP principles abound.

July: My family flies out on an extended trip overseas. Something we had planned for a long time. A little bit of work and a lot of traveling, exploring, adventuring. Cool to see my kids adapting to new cultures and countries. My wife and I traveled a lot in our early days, and I remembered what it was like. When we first met, I had the vision, I bought the tickets, I lead us to amazing places and experiences. We had crazy fun and crazy sex. What had happened? Life, I guess. We came home, found stressful jobs, started raising babies. Somewhere in there, I stopped leading and started to defer to her. Attraction went down, distractions went up. I can see it now. And now that we are on a new adventure I am in the lead again. The excitement is back, and the laughter, and the sex. Finally, I understand what it means to have Abundance Mentality. I had forgotten how wet she could get, and how hard I could get. The ED is long gone, because the pressure is gone. We are having so much fun, doing things in bed we have never done before. Afterward, I have to ask if she is OK. Of course, she smiles. Of course. I read the Martian and the War of Art.

August: Off course. While we were out of the country, I lapsed on exercise, ate too much food, and drank too much beer. Gained back some fluff, lost some gains. Not only that, but we are now back to work, back to school, back to the grind. More stress equals less sex, and the honeymoon, as they say, is over again. Then, while I go to visit my mom, , my wife finds a document on the laptop where I have been journaling and drafting OYS posts. She discovers The Red Pill and devours it for a weekend while I am gone. When I get home, I know something is up because she is being a shrew and, strangely, we have sex every night for a week. Then she tells me that she read everything. I hold frame and don’t hide. I’m sorry you had to see that, now you know and you can’t not know. Now we have to talk about it. It takes a while for me to explain the difference between TRP and MRP. I tell her how I found it, and why, and that I credit this sub for helping me get my head out of my ass and my ass into the gym. Yes, it’s harsh, but so is the fact that over 50% of marriages these days fail. You may not like it, but all this work, all this reading, started out as a way to keep this family together. Finally, she gets it. She realizes that she likes what’s happening and it’s none of her business what I am reading or writing. Exactly. I get back to work on diet and lifting. I read No Country for Old Men.

September: Forty-One. So, here I am. From the outside, things are much the same as they were a year ago. Same job, same wife, same dog, same bed. From the inside, though, everything is different. I have a mission and a MAP, I sleep well. I Initiate almost every night and still get turned down half the time. The difference is, the hard No bothers her more than it bothers me. More importantly, there is a lightness in my house. We have fun, mess with each other, flirt with each other. My kids are much calmer and happier and we have genuine conversation and laughter daily. I have internalized OI, abundance mentality, and I have FINALLY STFU (my biggest hurdle. As you can see by this post, I have a tendency to be...verbose), and I am actually starting to NGAF. As in, I feel in control of my destiny, my household, and my temper. I can visualize a life on my own, beholden to no-one, master of my domain. Sometimes I fantasize about that freedom. But for now, I am happy with hard-mode. I enjoy the company of my family. I will continue to take care of the shit I need to take care of and improve myself every day. Currently reading The Fountainhead and Manson’s Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

Thanks for reading, and for writing the posts that saved my marriage, possibly my life.